


Long is the Way

by lastSaskatchewanPirate



Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Cave-In, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-04-30
Packaged: 2019-03-01 01:06:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13283682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lastSaskatchewanPirate/pseuds/lastSaskatchewanPirate
Summary: Some people are said to try the patience of saints.Optimus and Megatron have tried the patience of Primus, and found its limit.





	1. the Dark Descent

It was times like this, Primus acknowledged ruefully, that the whole “turn yourself into a planet” idea was demonstrated to have significant drawbacks; to wit, the relative inability to directly intervene when certain of his creations were screwing up.

To be fair, it was hardly surprising that these two particular creations were giving him the geological equivalent of a massive headache, given that they had been doing so in a plethora of creative and wildly divergent ways since the moment they left the Well, and they had never once showed any signs of doing otherwise until the end of Time itself.

At least they weren’t boring. But seriously, could they just cooperate with His plan for once?

Not that one would generally expect much in the way of cooperation from a mechanism that had named himself after the most notably ill-fated, star-crossed, and generally contrary Prime ever created. Determined to the point of near-suicidal stubbornness, charismatic, brilliant when he wasn’t sabotaging himself with his single-mindedness, utterly ruthless in pursuit of his goals … and desperately in need of the balancing influence of his counterpart. A counterpart who frankly was in desperate need of some balancing himself, because that much self-flagellation and self-sacrifice was as much a recipe for disaster as the other’s runaway ego-fueled revolt against Absolutely Everything, What Else Have You Got So I Can Hate It, Too.

Teenagers. What’s a parent to do?

Primus cast open his sensors and reached out, searching for two particular spark signatures; and there they were, right next to each other as always, fighting each other again and making a huge mess of things in the process. As he watched, the two grappled fiercely on the edge of a ravine – once an ancient river, now bled dry; scabbed and cracking like continental eczema – tightly entwined and refusing to give an inch of ground.

The ground gave, instead. The ravine’s lip crumbled beneath their combined weight and dropped them unceremoniously into a long scrabbling slide of rubble, down to the pitted, fractured ravine floor …

… and Primus saw his chance and took it, opening a cavern below them. In they went – accompanied by several thousand tons of loose scree, not that it ultimately mattered (to Primus; as to the mechs themselves, their opinion on the matter was moot) – and the depths swallowed them despite the cries of dismay from the two and from their comrades gathered above. A tiny judicious planetary shrug, and the cavern mouth was buried deeply enough to provide significant delay to their extrication, a delay long enough that – Primus hoped – they just might get with the program.

Otherwise he was actually going to have to do something _drastic_.

*

Through the growing buzz of audio static, Optimus could hear, faintly, the rattle and shuffle of settling rock; closer, he could make out the vibration of deliberate, purposeful motion and, below that, the hum of fans struggling against exertion heat and choking dust. His tactical processor interpreted the sounds as threatening, but his ability to respond was critically hampered and his awareness of his surroundings was increasingly impaired as red-line warning after red-line warning scrolled across his HUD, damage reports and stress responses both. As he teetered on the edge of stasis, Optimus would have sworn that a familiar voice was grating next to his audial sensor.

“Well, Prime, this is another fine mess you’ve gotten us into.”


	2. Awake, arise, or be for ever fall'n

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is a philosophical dispute.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This ended up being a little less funny than originally planned, but there were some important questions that needed to be asked, so ...

Vestibular and gyroscopic were the first sensor packages to come back online, leaving Optimus with the questionably-useful information that he was propped up at a 23.7 degree angle from horizontal and skewed 5.86 degrees off-axis to the left. Lack of significant delta in any axis indicated that he was stable and in a gravity well, for what that was worth.

Well. Coupled with accelerometer data, it meant he was still on Cybertron; so all things being equal, that was worth quite a lot.

Audio rebooted at that point, and Optimus could hear similar rhythmic shuffling noises to those he had detected before being forced into temporary stasis.

Rhythmic noises indicated deliberate motion.

_Conscious_ motion.

Meaning there was someone else down here; and if his audio logs from the last few seconds pre-stasis were accurate, that someone had a distinctively deep, raspy voice and a tendency to call him “Prime” with the same sort of contempt that someone else might say “rebel scum.”

Optimus was jolted abruptly into full situational awareness with every system active and on high alert, thanks to his battle computer finally putting two and two together and coming up with _holy slag that’s Megatron we’re all gonna die_ …

He exploded out of the pile of rubble, weapon systems spinning up, landing in battle-ready stance; and was unceremoniously dumped on his aft when the pile of rubble promptly slid out from under him.

There was a contemptuous snort from the other side of the rubble heap. 

“Nice of you to finally wake up, Prime. Think you could stop thrashing before you bring down the whole cavern?”

Optimus turned, wary, and there he was; atop the scree slope in which Optimus had been buried, Megatron was examining the cavern ceiling with a professional eye, pausing occasionally to rummage through the loose stone at his feet.

One question filled the entirety of Optimus’s mind.

“Why?”

Megatron cast him a curious glance over one broad shoulder guard. “Why what, Prime? You’ll need to be a little more specific.”

Optimus struggled to his feet, more carefully this time. “Why am I still alive? You’ve clearly been online longer than I have. Why not just dispatch me and be done with it?”

“Prime, I’m impressed,” and there was a deep curl of pleased satisfaction in that rasping voice to match the smirk on Megatron’s face. “What a straightforwardly efficient solution. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

“I don’t,” said Optimus wearily. “You know I don’t.”

“And yet you acknowledge the possibility exists,” Megatron persisted, turning away from the rock face to pick his way across the landslide toward Optimus. “You can conceptualize the option of terminating an unconscious opponent. I genuinely didn’t know whether you could even do that much.”

Optimus was silent for a moment in pure shock. “You didn’t … of course I can! Just because I choose not to do something atrocious doesn’t mean I’m unaware of the possibility of it!”

Megatron looked at him measuringly, and Optimus had the disorienting sensation of being abruptly reevaluated. “So killing a fallen opponent is atrocious?”

“You know it is,” Optimus growled. “Just because _you’re_ willing to do it doesn’t mean I could ever condone it.”

“Really?” Megatron tilted his head a little, but where Optimus would have expected to see a superior smirk, there was none. “Not even if it would end the war? Save millions – billions – of lives? Tell me, Optimus,” and he stepped a little closer, “would you really stay your hand if our positions had been reversed? Kill me, end the Decepticon threat once and for all? You know Starscream can’t hold them together for long; he could keep them alive and hidden for a time, but one by one the Decepticons would fall to starvation, infighting, apathy, and the threat of empire would be dust.

“Think of it.” That deep harsh voice dropped to a murmur; standing as close as they were, the tone was almost intimate. “Think of all the lives you would save. Think of your precious organics, here. Kill me and the Decepticons will leave the planet, and your sweet fragile pets will be safe. Are you so certain you wouldn’t take the killing blow?”

Optimus felt as though his chest was caving in under the weight of Megatron’s words. He wasn’t wrong. He was, in fact, horribly, awfully right. The war would be over in one stroke, all those lives would be saved … some of the Decepticons could probably even be convinced to defect, and they could all _go home_ and rebuild; they could …

It felt like his joints were encased in lead, but Optimus managed to force himself into motion, to jerk his head roughly in negation of Megatron’s all-too-enticing words.

“No,” he rasped. “No, I would not. You would be imprisoned –“

Megatron laughed derisively. “And how long, exactly, do you think you can hold me?”

“Long enough for a trial!”

“Trial by whom?” Megatron demanded, eyes blazing; and he was chest to chest with Optimus now, they had moved closer without even realizing, close enough to touch. Close enough to kill. Megatron surged on, seemingly unaware of their potentially lethal proximity. “By your Autobots? By the Galactic Council? The verdict will be execution, you _know_ this! Why not save everyone the time and trouble and _end it while you can_?!”

Optimus grabbed Megatron by the shoulders, hard – hard enough to dent even that massive armor – and shoved him back. “Because it would be _wrong_! Because I won’t do that! Because … because if I were to do that, I’d be no better than _you_ , and then what’s the _point_?!”

His vents were heaving; optical cleanser was gathering at the corners of his eyes and trickling down his face in humiliating runnels through the dust. A bare arm’s reach away, Megatron looked at him again, and then smiled crookedly.

“That’s the question, isn’t it? What’s the point? Tell me, Prime,” as he turned away to climb the rubble heap once again, “if I’m as bad as you think … then why are you still here to ask the question?”


	3. On the brink of Hell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is an engineering dispute.

Optimus watched Megatron move away, up the slope. His back was exposed and his attention diverted to the search for firm footing among the loose rock, and Optimus’s battle computer was churning through possible scenarios, the likelihood of getting in a decisive shot before Megatron could dodge it …

Sickened, he turned away. The possibility of violence was inherent in all living things, he knew this, had seen it time and again for himself on worlds other than his own; the important thing was to recognize the potential for violence and to _choose something else_.

Still, those noble words rang a little hollow at the moment.

Optimus found himself staring blankly at his surroundings, and forced himself to focus. This was not the time for philosophical pondering; he was trapped in an unstable cavern with Megatron, of all people, and philosophy could wait until he was out of this hole.

It was, to be fair, quite a spacious hole. The ceiling soared above their heads high enough that Optimus could have stood on Megatron’s shoulders and still fallen short of reaching it; the walls curved around in a rough circle broken by the tongue of debris. The space was certainly not claustrophobia-inducing, which was something of a relief, and easily large enough that he could avoid Megatron with only minor cooperation on said mech’s part.

Said mech was once again examining the top of the scree ramp as though searching for enlightenment, occasionally reaching out to touch or lightly tap the rock fall which had quite thoroughly blocked the entrance.

Which, now that Optimus was really looking around, also seemed to be the only possible exit as well.

He sighed. Clearly this was a situation that was going to require a certain amount of teamwork in order to extricate themselves.

Teamwork. With Megatron.

He was doomed.

After a moment’s stern introspection, Optimus decided that he could be doomed and still function productively; more importantly, he – at least for the moment – could do that somewhere that Megatron wasn’t. There was in fact a significant amount of cave that fell under the category of “places Megatron wasn’t,” and while Optimus was reasonably certain that none of that territory actually contained an exit, conducting a more conclusive investigation was a good idea for a number of reasons. Getting Optimus away from someone who inspired in him the urge to shoot said someone in the back was only one of them.

He conducted an exhaustive search. Megatron continued poking at the blocked entrance in an appraising fashion that made Optimus want to throw things. For once, a surprise appearance of the Constructicons seemed like a fantastic proposition, because Optimus couldn’t see how else they were going to get out of there – as expected, the cavern was utterly devoid of convenient back doors, tunnels, mine shafts, thermal exhaust ports, crawl spaces, or basically anything that might serve as an egress.

Megatron glanced over at him appraisingly as Optimus clambered up the rubble slide to stand beside him, but for once did not offer any verbal opening or provocative jabs.

“It appears,” Optimus said heavily, “that this is likely to be our only way out.”

Megatron grunted, which Optimus chose to interpret as agreement; the alternatives – including rage, disdain, or even a temporarily blocked fuel line – were just depressing.

“Is your cannon functioning?”

“It is,” Megatron said slowly, side-eyeing him with understandable wariness, “although I’m unclear why you’d think that beneficial.”

Optimus gestured to the colossal pile of broken stone. “I assume, then, that there is a reason you can’t just blast a hole through this?”

Megatron’s derisive snort of laughter implied that the answer was probably ‘yes.’ “Quite a few reasons, Prime; would you like me to make a list? Or should I just go with the simplest: blasting a hole through this would bring the rest of the chamber down on our heads. I don’t know about you,” and his smirk turned a little darker, “but I don’t particularly relish the idea of dying that way.”

Optimus flinched. “Being crushed to death? No … nor do I.”

Megatron rewarded him with another snort of laughter, this one equally derisive. “Maybe _you_ have to worry about being crushed, but some of us are a little sturdier than that. Being immobilized and bored to the point of derangement until I eventually deactivate, however? I think I’ll pass.” Grinning, he turned back to his examination of the thoroughly-plugged egress.

Though he wouldn’t say it was yet to the point of derangement, Optimus could definitely empathize with the concern of overwhelming boredom. Idly, he reached out to jiggle one of the piled rocks, only to have his wrist seized in a crushing grip that was all too familiar.

Before he could deploy his blades or formulate a defense, Megatron had shoved him away from the wall with a snarl.

“You chrome-plated idiot! Are you trying to kill us both, or are you just that incompetent?”

“What –“

Megatron jabbed one finger toward the rock of contention. “Pull that out and half the blockage is going to collapse inward!”

“But –“

“ _On us_ ,” he growled. “I don’t intend to be buried any more conclusively than I already am; and if you’re going to continue randomly prodding at things you don’t understand, I will knock you offline and tie you up with your own energon tubing! You have nothing to contribute here, so _move back_.”

“I wasn’t aware that genocidal megalomania was a prerequisite for digging an escape tunnel,” said Optimus, aware that he was being intentionally provocative and somehow unable to stop.

“It’s not,” Megatron retorted. “Being designed and constructed for deep-core mining, on the other hand, most certainly is.”

Optimus gaped. “You …”

Megatron rolled his eyes in a gratuitous display of pique. “I was a miner once upon a time, which you know perfectly well.”

“You kept that programming?” Optimus asked quietly, ignoring the interjection. “After all this time?”

It was Megatron’s turn to gape, although he concluded his undignified open-mouthed interval with one of his two default facial expressions.

“Unlike some mechs, _Prime_ ,” he snarled, “I don’t fill my memory banks with useless trivia like my officers’ forging dates or the names of the local organics or pretty lies about _justice_ and _mercy_. You’d be amazed what you have room for if you exercise a little mental discipline!”

So much for defusing the situation. Trapped, goaded, hopelessly off-balance, Optimus found himself rising to the verbal challenge, blades locking into place even as the words left his vocalizer.

“You are the last person to lecture anyone on _discipline_ , Megatron!”

Megatron growled in counterpoint to the ominous whine of a fusion cannon cycling up to full power, but any attempt at a cutting rejoinder or witty repartee was rudely interrupted by an ominous geological rumbling.

As they stared in horror, the cavern floor abruptly gaped open; the pile of rubble poured obligingly into the rift, carrying them helplessly along with it; and with a final catastrophic shudder the entire cavern collapsed in on itself, sealing them even deeper beneath the planet’s surface.


	4. Wounds of Deadly Hate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a difference of perspective results in a lively debate.

It did seem likely at this point, Primus thought to himself as he opened a smaller Consequences Chamber and tucked his squabbling offspring inside, that staging some sort of intervention rather earlier in the sequence of events might have been helpful.

Oh, well. Power of hindsight, and all that.

Surely they’d figure it out and get with the program now.

… right?

*

Optimus heaved himself out of the chest-deep pile of broken stone and wheezed a cloud of dust from his vents. Within arms’ reach, Megatron was doing the same, albeit with more profanity.

“Well done, Prime,” Megatron snarled through the harsh rasp of choked vents. “Perhaps next time you’ll listen to me before collapsing the roof on us.”

Optimus was sorely tempted to throw a rock at him, but managed heroically to restrain himself. “I fail to see how exactly this was my fault, since I didn’t touch anything! Besides, it was the floor that collapsed, not the roof.”

“Yes, yes, as always you’re the innocent victim here,” Megatron muttered resentfully; but then he paused, and an expression of concentration temporarily supplanted his usual scowl. “… well, frag.”

“What?” Optimus said warily.

Megatron shook his head and then gave Optimus a quick, rueful grin. “Savor these words, Prime, because you’ll never hear them from me again: you were right.”

The wariness did not abate. “About what, exactly?”

“You didn’t collapse the roof.” The look of concentration had returned. “You also – and this should be less of a surprise – weren’t responsible for the collapse of the floor. What is far more concerning than my admitting you were right, though, is that I genuinely don’t know what _was_ responsible, or how to prevent it happening again.”

Optimus looked around the space in which they found themselves, an unfamiliar variety of helplessness swamping him like tar. He was used to feeling overwhelmed in the face of the Decepticons’ seemingly inexorable aggression, to feeling helpless in the face of his friends’ own pain and despair, to feeling the crushing fatigue of millions of years of unceasing conflict; but this was different, this was something he could neither fight nor negotiate. He knew nothing about geology or mining. He did not know how to get out of this hole. He was dependent on Megatron’s ancient knowledge; more worrisome, he was dependent on Megatron’s willingness to aid him in the face of an enmity that had spanned galaxies and lasted longer than some stars.

He was so fragged.

Megatron, oblivious to Optimus’s internal monologue, was meanwhile glaring at the chamber as though it had personally insulted him, which – in a way – Optimus supposed it had.

Optimus shrugged. “I suppose this area is just unstable?”

“It’s not, though.” Megatron transferred the glare to the ceiling a scant meter above his helm. “We’ve surveyed this area before; besides,” he tapped the stone overhead, “this is mostly granite. It’s geologically stable. In fact,” and the glare intensified – apparently the chamber really had insulted him, and on a professional level at that. “In fact, this type of rock formation shouldn’t even be able to form cave systems like this! What the frag is going on here?”

“Mining?” Optimus suggested weakly, and then immediately regretted it; Megatron turned a glare on him that would have caused a smaller mech to spontaneously combust on the spot.

“ _Mining_ ,” Megatron spat disdainfully. “You honestly think I didn’t consider that possibility? Does this look like a tool-worked surface to you? But no,” he seethed, “of course it doesn’t, you don’t even know what a tool-worked surface looks like! You never spent your entire function toiling in the dark for someone else’s benefit. You never held a mining tool in your life, you’ve probably never even _seen_ one; you’ve never been in a mine at all! You’ve never seen your comrades crushed to death in a cave-in! You’ve never felt your joints solidify with rock dust until every motion is agony! The worst on-the-job injury you had to face was port fatigue from too many link-ups!”

“How many times do we have to go down this road?” Optimus snapped, goaded by the vicious derision. “Yes, I was a data clerk! Yes, I had an easier life than you did by far! Yes, you and your comrades were treated disgracefully, which is why I joined you in the first place!”

“And then you _betrayed me_!” It was a howl, not a shout; it was despair and rage and fulminating grief so deep, so fundamental, that it could not be expressed as anything less than a cry of utter anguish; Optimus stepped back as Megatron stepped forward, fists clenched. “You _used_ me! You used our work, our cause, to bring yourself before the Council; you cast it all aside as soon as they offered you the Primacy! You sold yourself to that pack of bloody-handed charlatans for the promise of power, you became their puppet! You betrayed _everything_!”

“I was trying to _help_ you, you stubborn ass!” Optimus roared back, forgetting all precepts of diplomacy in one fell swoop.

“ _Help_ me?” Megtron shoved Optimus roughly, forcing him back; the loose piles of shattered stone slipping underfoot, forcing him down to one knee, and Optimus deployed his blades without thinking, the reflexes of war written too deep and too well. “That kind of help I would expect from Starscream! Not from my friend, my partner, my lo—“ He broke off with a snarl. “How the frag can you say you were trying to _help_?”

Optimus shifted his weight, shifted his feet, regained his balance; set his stance. “You were losing the ear of the Council – you let them goad you into anger! You let them push you into words of violence, and from there they could ignore you, cast you as a dangerous rebel, destroy everything we were working for! I didn’t expect them to offer me the Primacy; I just wanted to stop you—“

That was a poor choice of words under the circumstances, and Optimus realized that as soon as they left his vocalizer; even if he hadn’t, the huge fist connecting with the side of his head immediately afterward would certainly have delivered the message.

“I never should have trusted you,” Megatron hissed between clenched teeth. Optimus blocked the next strike to his head but not the knee to his chest. “I never should have listened to your pretty lies … I never should have _believed_ you!” Millions of years between this cave and the arena, but Megatron had never lost the skill that had kept him alive and made him a champion, and millions of years of war had let him hone that skill further; it was all Optimus could do to stay on his feet, to block or evade blows that would crush even his armor with the force of Megatron’s wounded rage behind them. “You wanted to stop me? You will _never_ stop me! You’ll have to _kill_ me, and _you can’t_!”

Optimus could hear his own vents rasping under the load of exertion and occlusion. “I wanted to stop you from making a mistake! To stop you from making an enemy of the Council!”

“The Council was _already_ our enemy!” Two-fisted hammer strike to Optimus’s shoulder that buckled his plating but left the barest opening beneath Megatron’s right arm, and Optimus thrust desperately, feeling the blade edge catch all too briefly before Megatron moved, horrifyingly fast, trapping the blade against his side and snapping off at the wrist. Optimus choked on a scream of pain. “And you sided with them when it counted the most!”

“ _I never wanted to be Prime_!” It, too, was a howl of anguish; of betrayal and grief and infinite, impossible loss. “I never wanted to be your enemy! But nor could I stand by and let you destroy our world, not when I had the power to try to stop you; no more than I could stand by and let you visit cruelty and death on an innocent species half a galaxy away!”

Incensed, Megatron kicked him into the far wall. Neither of them spared the attention to notice the ominous rumbling beneath their feet; unlike each other, it was not an immediate threat.

“Innocent,” Megatron seethed. “So innocent that they destroy and capture and experiment on us at any opportunity. So innocent that they slaughter each other in droves, so innocent that they let their own offspring die in filth and privation! If they were actually worth notice, I would exterminate them on principle.” Kick, punch, block, punch, leg sweep; Optimus rolled with it and came to his feet, threw himself forward and was greeted with a solid blow to the chest that gave Megatron the opportunity to flip him over one shoulder to crash into the rubble and broken stone that, unnoticed, was pouring through a growing rent in the cavern floor. “Isn’t it fortunate, then, that I’m only here for the damn fuel!”

The enraged monologuing was rudely interrupted at that point, when the rift in the cavern floor opened wide enough that both mechs abruptly found themselves trapped, dragged in by the cascading debris and jammed waist-deep like angry corks in a vengeful bottle.

Gasping, Optimus sheathed his blades – broken and whole – and shook his head. “Enough, Megatron. We have had this argument time and time again, and I am done with it.”

“Pathetic,” Megatron snarled through bared teeth. “Even when you have the upper hand, you can’t bring yourself to take the final blow! You’re weak, you and all your people! You haven’t the strength to do what must be done, to become the monster the world demands! You hide behind your oh-so-virtuous morality like a sparkling, praying that someone else will have the strength and courage to do what must be done, as ugly as it is. You fragging coward! You don’t deserve to lead a picnic, to say nothing of an army!”

Optimus punched him in the head.

The rest of the floor promptly dropped out from beneath them.


	5. Lost Happiness and Lasting Pain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are important conversations.

The drop into darkness was longer this time, and the impact worse.

Optimus came back online with a dozen alerts blinking red across his HUD and another dozen in the queue, lower priority but by no means negligible. He sighed and dismissed them – there was nothing to be done about them until he had escaped and could be seen by a medic, and right now his attention was needed elsewhere.

Megatron was a silent grey heap nearby. Optimus felt a moment’s clench of genuine fear that the mech had actually offlined this time; his biolights were dim and almost completely obscured by dust, the only significant light on his frame a vivid splash of energon that Optimus was quite certain had not been there previously.

Any action he might have taken was preempted by a shudder that rattled Megatron’s armor, and then a deep, heart-felt groan.

“I,” said Megatron dourly, still facedown in the rubble and apparently content to remain so for the moment, “am too old for this scrap.”

“You are not alone in that,” said Optimus, and tried to ignore the warm wash of relief through his systems. He cleared his throat. “You are also bleeding.”

Megatron hauled himself to sitting and looked down at the tacky, faintly luminous mess gumming up the armor on his right side from armpit to hip. “So I am,” he acknowledged ruefully. “That was a good shot back there – you’ve clipped a lateral feed line under my arm.”

Optimus flinched internally. That sort of injury usually wasn’t serious as long as medical attention was available, but left unattended there was a non-zero chance that Megatron was going to bleed out before his self-repair systems could close the nick in his fuel line.

“Do you have a field patch with you?”

Megatron shook his head. “I don’t suppose you …?”

“No.” Dismay began churning in Optimus’s tanks. “How long can you hold out?”

Megatron snorted. “That depends entirely on how long we can go without either trying to kill each other or plummeting to our mutual death. Absent either of those conditions, I think my self-repair can staunch it well enough.” He shifted into a more comfortable position that did not involve one leg being twisted behind him in a frankly impressive display of flexibility, and leaned back against a convenient chunk of scenery. “My turn to ask, then: do _you_ think we can stop fighting long enough to get out of this hole?”

Optimus closed his eyes. “I would like to answer yes … but to my shame, so far I have been unable to do so honestly.”

“That’s fair.” Megatron shifted again so that the chunk of scenery was not pressing quite so hard on a fresh dent. “Not as though I’ve been doing any better.”

Silence fell, broken only by the hiss of falling sand and the occasional mutter of settling stone.

Optimus stirred some small time later, roused by an errant unresolved string finally making it up the processing queue far enough to prick his attention. “You never actually answered my original question.”

“Fair’s fair,” said Megatron, and the slag-eating grin was audible in his voice, “you never answered mine, either.”

Pause. Then, “… what was your question again?”

Megatron burst out laughing, but for once it was genuinely amused rather than mocking, malevolent, gloating, or the other usual varieties that Optimus had learned to hate.

“I suppose I can’t fault you for losing track,” Megatron acknowledged, sounding almost merry about it, “you’ve probably hit your head a few times at this rate. My question was,” and he sobered, “if I’m really as bad as you think I am, why didn’t I kill you when I woke before you did, back at the very beginning of this little jaunt through Primus’s bowels?”

Optimus was quiet for a long time, long enough that Megatron began to wonder whether he might have actually suffered some sort of concussive processor damage; but then Optimus shook his head with a tired sigh and admitted, “I don’t know. I don’t know why you didn’t kill me then, or any of the other times you’ve had a chance. I don’t really know why you make _any_ of the choices that you make.”

“If it’s any consolation,” Megatron offered, “I have no fragging idea why you make any of the choices that you make, either.”

Optimus turned a look of such blank incomprehension on him that it should have immediately become a reaction meme with a pithy caption. Sadly, the only person available to appreciate it was Megatron, who staunchly disavowed all knowledge of human culture, memetic or otherwise, and so the opportunity was lost to the bowels of Primus.

“Oh, spare me the moon-calf eyes,” said Megatron sharply, “you know perfectly well what I’m talking about. It baffles me that someone as tactically brilliant as you are seems to have such a poor grasp of strategy. It’s almost as though you have no actual long-term plan at all.”

There was a ringing silence, and then Megatron began to laugh.

“Oh, no … oh, _Prime_! Is that really what’s been going on all this time? You really have no long-term goal other than ‘stop the evil Decepticons?’”

“I think that’s an unnecessarily harsh over-simplification,” said Optimus in tones of wounded dignity.

This was clearly the wrong tack if Optimus was trying to be taken seriously. Megatron laughed so hard that the only sound that emerged was an embarrassingly high-pitched wheeze.

It took a surprisingly long time for Megatron to pull himself together, but he did manage eventually. Optimus sat glumly through the entire process and radiated much the same air of noble suffering as a Labrador retriever being given a bath.

“All right, let’s try this again.” Megatron cleared his throat but otherwise made no effort to exude anything resembling his usual menace, having apparently decided that this particular revelation was so irrevocably damaging to Optimus’s dignity that he didn’t even need to bother and had won the usual Intimidation Face-off by default.

Frankly, Optimus couldn’t really fault Megatron’s logic at this point, though he’d sooner jump headfirst into a smelter than admit it.

Megatron, being perfectly well aware of Optimus’s state of high dudgeon and possessing not a single sympathetic capacitor in his whole enormous frame, simply reached over and poked Optimus in the lateral vents, grinning. “I confess, Prime, that I am perplexed by your strategic goals; if I didn’t know better, I would think you didn’t have any. Since that _clearly_ isn’t the case,” and the smug amusement radiating off him made Optimus long to punch him again, “perhaps you would be so kind as to enlighten me.”

“Megatron,” said Optimus, in the deep grave tones that all Autobots had come to dread as a harbinger of Optimus Being Very Disappointed At You, “surely you do not think I am so naïve as to share with you our long-term military planning.”

“In point of fact, I do think you’re that naïve,” said Megatron. He wasn’t even trying to hide his grin at this point, which made him look even more like a shark on a blood-trail than usual. “Well done for seeing through my oh-so subtle evil scheme, though.” He shifted his position again, and this time Optimus caught the infinitesimal hitch in his movement, an almost undetectable tremor in his right arm; the nick in Megatron’s fuel line was still bleeding, and his systems were beginning to reroute power and neural connectivity away from the area. “Humor me, though – what does your future look like, once our war is over? You imagine Cybertron rebuilt, I expect; what does that look like to you?”

The memories unpacked behind Optimus’s eyes like a million flowers opening under the sun: the buildings, the lights, the people; the ceaseless hum of movement and energy flowing through and over the planet as its inhabitants went about their simple, normal lives. No weapons, no fighting, no recruitment posters or slogans. He remembered, with piercingly painful clarity, how the great fountains in front of Iacon’s central library were always filled with sparklings playing, splashing, shouting; how the sunlight would refract through a million cascading droplets until the air itself seemed to glitter.

He remembered the warm, syrupy late afternoon sun as it slanted through the tall windows of the Archive, and the lazy galactic swirls of crystalline dust, a different glitter but still so familiar, so desperately missed.

All the memories of an all-too-brief life – Orion Pax’s life – seemed to unfold at once, more than he could possibly bear, and Optimus found himself wide-eyed and gasping with heartbreak.

He couldn’t speak. There was too much to say.

Megatron was staring at him, waiting; to Optimus’s shock, there actually seemed to be some measure of sympathy there.

“You want to return to the world you knew, don’t you?”

“ _Yes_ ,” said Optimus reflexively, unthinking in his desperate pain. Then he shook himself. “I mean … I know that it was not perfect, that – that there were terrible injustices, that there were so many dark secrets hidden under the glitter …” He fisted his hands against the terrible longing ache. “But the world I knew, the one I remember … I remember it as simple and good. The things that linger most in my mind after all this time are the little moments, the little things that I shared with friends …” His vocalizer clicked, so many words piling up and with them so much grief. He wondered suddenly, with a cold sick horror, what had happened to the sparklings he had seen playing in the fountains.

Optimus scrubbed his hands fiercely against his thighs, forced down the grief and longing, and turned to Megatron with a challenging glare.

“What about you, Megatron? What does your future Cybertron look like?”

Megatron looked mildly offended. “Has it really been so easy to forget? I know it’s been a while, Prime, but I did hope that at least some of the things I said were memorable.”

Optimus shook his head. “No, Megatron. I’m not asking about your philosophy or your cause, I’m asking what that would look like when it was realized.”

“It would look like _freedom_ ,” Megatron snapped. “It would look like _equality_ , you idiot. No more Functionist Council telling us that we’re only worth what our alt modes can do. No more castes, no more Disposables, no more protoforms brought online and forced into bodies and roles that they didn’t chose. No more Senators looking down on us from their golden towers, grinding us further into the dirt with a foot on our necks as they elevate themselves further and further with every breath, every action, elevating themselves beyond responsibility or consequences. No more –“

“No,” said Optimus, and the soft, careful sorrow in his voice stopped Megatron’s escalating rant. “I wasn’t asking what your world would _not_ be. I was asking what it _would_ be. You are right to ask this of me, and now I am asking you. What would it look like? What would people do, where would they live? How would they live? How –“

Megatron made a brief impatient noise. “How the frag should I know? What does that matter?”

“Would it be a world of armed compounds and military barracks?” Optimus pressed. “Would there be manufacturing and commerce, or would we become a race of pirates, raiding other worlds and species for the supplies we could no longer produce?”

“And what would be wrong with that?” Megatron demanded. “If we have the strength and the will to do so, then we shall; and if we have too little of either, then we shall fail, and those who remain will be stronger for it.”

“Is that really what you want, though? Is that really your vision for our world, for our people?” Optimus sighed. “I, for one, am tired of fighting. The Council and the Functionists are gone. The society that you deplore is only a memory now. There are so few of us left, and all I want is to go home. I want to live in peace with those I – with those I _love_ ,” he choked, “I want … I want to see sparklings playing in the fountains again. I want peace, Megatron; but I fear that our visions of peace are so different that that goal is utterly unattainable.”

Another silence fell, and this one was choking in a way their previous silences had not been, thick with grief and as vast as the distances between the stars, an unbridgeable gap.

And then, “I don’t know,” said Megatron very quietly, that deep harsh voice stripped to the barest whisper. “I don’t know what peace would look like, Prime. I don’t … I don’t have any memories on which to build a vision of a happy ending. All of my memories are of darkness and struggle and blood.”

Optimus reached out a hand. “ _All_ of your memories?” he asked gently.

Megatron stared at the offered hand as though it contained a live grenade with the pin removed; and then he reached out in turn, a single decisive motion, and grasped it firmly. “No,” he admitted. “Not all of them.”

The floor gave way beneath them.


	6. And In the Lowest Deep a Lower Deep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At the end of the line, there's nowhere left to go but up.

On the one hand, at least the drop this time was shorter.

On the other hand, they were now both wedged face-to-face into what could only generously be described as a crevice, and debris from the previous series of cave-ins was raining down upon them. Some of the boulders were large enough to inflict significant damage; that issue aside, they were rapidly on their way to being buried alive.

“Our situation has not improved,” Megatron observed.

“Well spotted,” said Optimus wearily, and then winced as a helm-sized rock bounced off one of his shoulder guards, denting it.

“Hold still,” said Megatron thoughtfully; and then he braced his hands on either side of Optimus’s shoulders, hauling himself out of the rubble as far as he could; and Optimus realized with a sense of unreality that was frankly impressive given his current situation that Megatron was shielding him from the rock fall.

“What,” he started to say, and then stopped, appalled. Between their latest plummet and the current exertion, the wound beneath Megatron’s arm had worsened. Energon was oozing steadily down his plating, its glow dimmed and choked with dust. “Megatron, you – stop, you’re bleeding, you _can’t_!”

Megatron grunted, pain and dull fury and amusement all combined. “Don’t ever try to tell me what I can or cannot do, Prime.”

“You’re bleeding,” said Optimus. “ _Please_ …”

“It’s never a matter of what I _can_ do,” said Megatron, as though Optimus hadn’t spoken, “it’s a matter of what I _will_ do. And I _will_ do this, because your pathetic armor can’t take the impact and mine can, and I’d rather not be stuck down here eye-to-eye with your mangled corpse if I can help it; that seems like a terribly boring way to pass the time until I die.”

“Yes, I’m sure that would be very tiresome,” said Optimus dryly, and then winced as a chunk of broken stone bounced off Megatron’s backplates with an inappropriately cheery _ping_. “By the same token, I would rather not be trapped under your dented corpse when your arms give out because you bled to death in a fantastically stupid display of one-upsmanship, so would you _please stop doing that_?”

Megatron held himself up a moment longer in spiteful proud defiance, but Optimus could see the quiver in his injured arm growing stronger, and finally Megatron allowed himself to sink back down with a stifled groan. “If you insist,” he muttered resentfully; “but don’t expect me to concede the point.”

Optimus rolled his eyes. “Perish the thought.”

Megatron looked at him, openly startled, and then laughed. “Do you know, I haven’t heard you be quite this sarcastic in millennia? Why the change?”

Why indeed; Optimus was confounded by the realization that Megatron was right – he was being sarcastic, he was being deliberately provocative, almost _playful_ in his unfettered verbal sparring. It had been a long, long time indeed – millennia, in fact – since he had allowed himself that freedom, and that he was doing so with _Megatron_ of all people …?

Perhaps he really had hit his head a few times.

_All my memories are of darkness and struggle and blood._

_All of your memories?_

_… No. Not all of them._

Or perhaps there was a better answer.

“I don’t know,” Optimus mused aloud, as much for his own benefit as to answer Megatron. “Perhaps I really have suffered processor damage from this experience; or perhaps I no longer feel it necessary to keep you at a distance.”

“Keeping me at a distance would certainly be a challenge right now,” said Megatron, smirking, and gestured as best he could to their current position, wedged into a rapidly-filling crevice; but Optimus felt the tiny, quickly-suppressed flare of pleasure crackle through the EM field so closely pressed to his own, and hid his own smile in response.

“Could it work?” Optimus demanded abruptly, giving voice at last to the question that had been banging around in his processor with increasing fervor throughout their subterranean adventure. “Making peace, I mean. Ending the war. Could we do it?”

Megatron blinked at the non sequitur, but his gaze sharpened quickly and Optimus could see the strategic calculations gathering speed in that frighteningly laser-focused mind. “That depends entirely on what you have in mind.”

“Détente,” said Optimus promptly. “Armistice. Neither side surrendering to the other. Peace talks, negotiation –“

“Politics, you mean,” Megatron interjected dryly. “How dull. But no,” he continued, overriding Optimus’s attempt to object, “I understand the premise of your proposal. I will admit, it has some merit; at least you have the wisdom not to talk of surrender, I would never be able to sell _that_ to the Decepticons.”

“Nor I to the Autobots,” said Optimus. “And there will certainly be strenuous objections from my team, possibly even demands of reparation …”

“Let’s not go into that right now,” said Megatron, “given the circumstances that precipitated the war in the first place. It’s easy to demand reparations when you come from the side that had anything to lose in the first place.”

Optimus opened his mouth to object, thought about what Megatron was actually saying, and closed it again. “Fair enough. What of disarmament timetables? Should we –“

Megatron cut him off impatiently. “You’re getting ahead of yourself, Prime. I don’t recall actually _agreeing_ to a détente, or even to the discussion of one.”

Disappointment rolled in, more crushing than the weight of the planet bearing down on his struts, and Optimus felt the tiny spark of hope flicker under the awful impact of the reality of millions of years of open war.

Megatron saw it in his face, and sighed wearily. “Prime,” he said, and his voice softened, “listen to me.”

Optimus flicked his gaze up to meet Megatron’s – when had he dropped his head? – and was silenced still further by the unexpected sincerity there.

“I’m not saying it isn’t worth doing,” Megatron continued, “and I’m not saying that I won’t try. But you do realize, I hope, that it’s going to be a bit more complicated than simply crawling out of this Primus-damned hole and announcing the war’s over, don’t you? It’s been a long time, and –“ Megatron looked, if anything, briefly chagrined, “—not all of the people who’ve joined me have done so for, ah, terribly _noble_ reasons.”

“Why, Megatron,” said Optimus, and his voice made a dust storm feel unbearably humid, “are you saying that the great Decepticon army, is, in fact, a howling pack of bloodthirsty lunatics?”

Megatron chuckled. “Not _all_ of them.” He sobered suddenly, piercing Optimus with a gimlet stare. “And by the same token, Prime, not all of your people are without stain, either.”

“No,” Optimus admitted, voice low and hoarse with shame. “We all have blood on our hands; war has made even the most peaceful of us into murderers, and if either side were to insist upon reparations then the score-keeping would never end. It has to end,” he said, beseechingly, praying that Megatron heard him; “we have to end it before there’s nothing left to save.”

Megatron was quiet for a long moment, considering; Optimus had known him long enough, knew him well enough, to read that much from that still, grave, scarred face, as the dust and rock continued to fall around them; and then Megatron looked back at Optimus, met his eyes, and nodded. “Very well, then,” he said. “Let’s end it.”

Far above, there was a sudden strange sound among the constant susurration of cascading sand and settling stone – a squealing metallic scrape coupled with an oddly hollow crunching, like a giant fork taking the top off of an equally gigantic egg – and a blinding shaft of light pierced the darkness, lighting up miniature nebulae from the swirling dust clouds.

For an indefinable length of time – Optimus would later wonder whether his chronometer had given up at that point – they stared in silence as dust motes glittered in their steady, inexorable fall.

Optimus stirred himself, struggling against the dragging clasp of rubble immobilizing him. “Is it … can we reach it?”

Megatron squinted upward, then shook his head. “Not the top edge of the hole, no. Too high. But …” He squirmed. “There might be a handhold lower down.”

“Is it _big_ enough?”

“Probably not,” Megatron admitted. “Hard to tell from here, though; and really, it’s not like we’ve had any better options present themselves.” As if to punctuate his remark, the rubble in which they were trapped suddenly lurched beneath them under the impact of several frighteningly large boulders.

Optimus wheezed dust from his vents. “After all this time … I can honestly say I never thought it would end like this.”

Megatron laughed. “Come now, Optimus – don’t give up so easily.” He squirmed again in the rapidly compacting rubble. “Here, can you get a foot onto my knee?”

It took a significant amount of effort, but Optimus eventually got a foot onto the broad flange protecting Megatron’s knee joint, and from there to Megatron’s cupped hand; and before Optimus could organize his thoughts to object or even cry out, Megatron had forced his right arm out of the rubble and fired one last searing bolt from the fusion cannon that tore the top right out of their tiny prison, boring out the crack and leaving a hole just barely large enough for a large mech.

“Ready?” Megatron gasped; his optics were flickering, that shot had drained all but the last bare dregs of his energon; and then he had both hands linked beneath Optimus’s foot and was thrusting him up toward the light with every last joule of energy in Megatron’s body.

What followed was a nightmare scrabble toward the light that would return to haunt Optimus’s recharge for millennia, vitrified rock shattering under his hands as he clawed his way desperately toward – he hoped – freedom. Hand over hand, fist over fist, fighting for every nanometer of ground he gained, stone and rubble shifting and breaking as he went, no room in his processor for anything but hundreds of motor-routine-level evaluations every femtosecond, no room to think about Megatron alone in the dark far below, Megatron bleeding out, flickering out because he’d used up the last of his energy in one single inconceivable selfless act …

Optimus climbed toward the light, struggling upward, shoving through a fusion-bored tunnel so narrow that his armor scraped and bent and deformed; and he kept going, kept climbing, until the hole abruptly widened into open space and he was hauling himself, gasping, onto the floor of a crater.

Examination of that floor from his current proximity – i.e. lying on his face – revealed long parallel grooves of the sort that were usually left by heavy-duty construction and demolition gear.

Optimus looked up, looked around, eyes still adjusting to the searing brilliance after so long in the dark, and realized that he was at the bottom of an excavation pit, illuminated by floodlights and surrounded by gob-smacked Decepticons. A further brief moment of adjustment and he recognized the assembled group – Constructicons, clearly rounded up by Shockwave and deployed to dig out their leader with all due haste.

Optimus hauled himself to his feet and lurched toward them. His characteristic paint job was effectively gone, stripped by his journeys up and down through the planet’s crust, and what remained was so covered with dust as to be indistinguishable; his armor was buckled and dented, one helm finial was broken off, and he looked as though he’d been dragged backward through a gravel pit by Devastator on a bad day, but he was still unmistakably Optimus Prime, and the Constructicons stepped back from his approach as a single unit.

“Widen that hole,” Optimus grated out though a vocalizer choked with rock dust.

“On whose authority?” demanded Scrapper. “Yours?”

“Megatron,” said Optimus flatly, “is still down there. He is injured. He cannot fit through that hole in its current state. _Start digging_.”

The nice thing about working with a gestalt-linked group was that, once they got with the program, things tended to progress very efficiently. The hole was enlarged with almost frightening rapidity, and as soon as they broke through the ceiling and into the tiny, rubble-clogged chamber, Optimus grabbed Hook’s crane line and leapt into the breach. Above him, Optimus heard Hook’s shout of dismay, heard Bonecrusher and Mixmaster shout their own horror as they jumped to stabilize Hook and keep him from being pulled in after Optimus, and then he paid them no mind at all as the crane line played out and he landed on the rubble pile below.

Megatron was buried almost up to the neck. His eyes were closed, and he was very still, and for an infinitely long and infinitely horrible moment, Optimus thought he was too late.

“Megatron?”

It was a sickeningly long time before a response came, but then Megatron’s biolights flickered dimly and his eyes opened. Optimus felt the swift gut-punch impact of overwhelming relief.

“Optimus.” Megatron’s eyes weren’t tracking right – in point of fact, they weren’t tracking at all, and Optimus realized with a sick jolt that Megatron was blind. His power levels were too low, his injuries too severe; he was conscious, but that was the extent of his capabilities right now.

“I came back,” Optimus found himself whispering, numb and stupefied as reaction began setting in at last. He couldn’t hold it back any longer.

Megatron quirked an echo of a smile at him. “My hero.”

**Author's Note:**

> _Long is the way  
>  And hard, that out of hell leads up to light._
> 
> \-- Milton


End file.
